The Portrait of Len Kagamine
by Meridian Diamond
Summary: Rin's grandfather had asked her to visit him in his mansion. For whatever reason it may be, she had no idea. Her grandfather was an artist, but she'd never seen his painting of a person before until she was moved to a room upstairs: It's one of a boy done excellently. Things go awry; every painting comes to life, and she must escape the horrific night and the clutches of jealousy.
1. Chapter 1

_T_he P_o_rtrait of Le_n_ Kaga_m_ine

**.,.**

_**T**_here was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knif_**e**_

_The Graveyard Book_, by N. Gaiman

**,.,**

**A** morose young lady walked in, leaving the doors open for her driver to get inside no problem.

"So, you've come."

She nodded inertly, her eyes dim with bleakness. The interior of the mansion didn't change, nor were the furniture arranged differently from her last visit, although the atmosphere was droning. Everything was as it should be: An old Victorian house with hardly any vibrant souls that could radiate the whole place life and humdrum beings that need only breathe whatever healthy air was left in the room to spend the day with. Every time she visits, there would be an impressive number of paintings more than the previous time, and all the more detailed and bigger.

And who should forget the ever-cryptic old man who kept his caprices to himself? He stood with such posture and carried himself like a well-dignified man, as someone as him should, that his stiffness and stillness until spoken to or asked to respond was much like an ornament's themselves. If he stood in a crowd of mentally disturbed psychos, he would most likely stand out, and people would stare at him for his lugubriousness, dismissing all the others as ordinary irrelevancies that deserved not even a smidge of their discreet interest. He was a healthy old man of sixty-something: Wrinkles were barely seen in his face, as he preferred not eating anything that would wreck his fitness, and thus that called for the whole of his body looking like it came out of a refrigerator. His face wasn't droopy like all the other's his age however it would be clear to anybody to see that he was older than middle-aged. A proper man, he wore vintage suits and a necktie, no matter where, it was commonplace of him to even wear it in his lonely household. He had a small moustache and a goatee, whitening with age. Where his hair once was there was now a bald spot, and a huge one. His thinning hair was enough proof that he wasn't as young as he used to be. The last she'd seen her grandfather was during her father's funeral, silent and almost a corpse himself with grief.

Sure enough, he looked like he hadn't changed. Except that you wouldn't know if it was the blonde girl or him who radiated such an aura that created such a downcast atmosphere. Both relatives nodded in silent agreement, and the young lady bowed.

"At your request," she said, her voice soft and monotone. She stood up straight, facing her grandfather, who was more than a foot taller than her. Sad sapphire and clear carmine.

There was a noise from outside, and a tall figure appeared, carrying heavy luggage with miraculously just his two arms.

The girl paid him no heed until he set them down on the floor, heaving a sigh.

"G'noon, Sir." Her butler bowed politely, his bleached green hair covered by his hat. "The name's Gatch, sir. I'm kinda your granddaughter's new slave. Pleased to be acqua—nice to meet you. So, where'm I gonna carry these to?"

He turned to his mistress, who in turn said in a nonchalant fashion, "Up in my room. It's on the second floor, just left from the stairs—"

"I'm afraid that won't be necessary. It's at the end of the hallway on the topmost floor. It's the biggest room in the whole floor, so it wouldn't be so hard finding it."

Alarmed aqua eyes widened as the girl furrowed her brows at her grandfather. "Won't I still be sleeping at the same room?"

The old man shook his head. "Not this time, Melinda."

The young man Gatch raised his eyebrows at the girl, shrugging as he slung the bags over his shoulder, the weight not a matter to him. "Heard that, Sport? _Not this time, _Melinda."

He wiggled his eyebrows mockingly at her, and then proceeded to lift the luggage up the stairs.

There was a sigh: The girl stared after the butler as he struggled to carry all the bags up the stairs. They were alone again.

Melinda felt the tension crawling in their skins, but it's become so hackneyed that the mood seemed too easy to brush off now. Sadness was a familiar stranger that she talks to every day, but didn't know much of.

In the vastness of the antechamber, she couldn't have felt all the more suffocated. The emptiness of this house made the opposite effect on her…

"How do you fare, Granddaughter?"

The question seemed to be articulated so dully that it sounded foreign: A busy old man like her grandfather shouldn't have time for melancholies, as a smile was easier to give than a frown. In this case, though…

"Okay, I guess," replied his granddaughter, taut. "It's been pretty hard."

"Yes, yes, I see it has," her grandfather was muttering to himself, his eyes never leaving her face. "Perhaps you might be wondering why I invited you so peculiarly, given the circumstances."

Actually, she was wondering what he could have been thinking, but that's been in her mind, too. Also, 'invited' was a word too inappropriately used in this sort of situation. It should be something like 'summoned…' She only nodded.

Melinda's grandfather's gaze never fell upon anywhere else: Nothing she thought on her face was eye-catching enough for him to notice it too long a time that it bothered her. "We will be having dinner soon. It would be rude to speak of it without your new confrère, as I think everyone deserves the right to know why you have to come here so far."

"He's my friend," Melinda said curtly. And that wasn't really answering her unspoken question. "So I'll have to wait until then to know the reason."

Her grandfather put his arm around her shoulders and led her to the grand staircase that beckoned them in its stunning grandeur. It wasn't the stairway that caught Melinda's faltering thought: His hands were cold, and, if she were correct, shaking. Did such a thing that could frighten even the infallible Joachim Kagamine exist? It could have been her imagination, although she wasn't so numb with touch that she couldn't feel the odd trembling of Grandfather.

"And until then, you shouldn't leave your room."

As he escorted her up the steps, presumably to her room, she couldn't help but not shake an instinctive intuition off that screamed danger. They were on the second floor, and she sneaked a glance at her old room, in which she had slept innumerably all her lifetime every visit. They had turned to ascend the next flight of stairs, and thus she stole away her only opportunity of entering it once again.

At last they were at the topmost floor.

In every hallway there were at least fifty paintings hung on the walls. Words to describe the mansion were either too lengthy, or were yet to exist. A few possibly repetitive words that would be near accurate to label it were dark, mysterious and macabre. Apart from change, this mansion's properties were so perpetually the same for what seemed to be centuries that it's the only thing that never changes. You could wake up in here and always feel like it was yesterday that you slept in another place, and be shocked to find yourself in a room of this scary house.

They took a turn to the left and Melinda found herself walking in a hallway she didn't go through before. Albeit his structure and his ostensive disinclination to moving about the mansion, he knew the halls like he'd been there moments before. Then again, it was _his_ house. Perhaps his attention wasn't solely being concentrated on the peculiar paintings that looked too lifelike to be stuck inside a frame. Truthfully Melinda herself was being too conscious about the objects that weren't even real inside the borders of Grandfather's imagination: She felt as though they were about to materialise and surface out of the wooden rims.

Her new room was at the very end of the floor, just as Grandfather had told Gatch…

Melinda's feet stopped moving when they were at the front of the huge black door, where Grandfather turned the knob and opened the door, his hand still on her shoulder. Somehow he didn't notice her inaction while he did, or he didn't make much of it. Her room seemed almost exactly like the one she'd slept in before, except there was something about it that made it look so considerably bigger. A small chandelier decorated the room with light that lit up the whole interior of the room: An incredibly large canopy bed with silk curtains to hide whoever slept on it sat at the farthest end of the room next to a small mahogany nightstand; there were shelves at every wall, filled to the rows with books, novels and odes about whomever she didn't even recognise; the window, a wide berth of the darkness view, was high as the ceiling; a white marble fireside was to her left, quiet embers crackling; black patterns so inexplicable and horribly sharp adorned the walls of the room with its simple sanguine gore. Just like all the other rooms in Grandfather's manor, not a single sign of modern advancement dwelled, and neither did any look like it would belong there.

Her bags were inside, yet the familiar face that greeted her with a smile forever glued to his expression wasn't.

"Shouldn't we have met my butler up the stairs…?"

"Ah," said Grandfather, ushering her while getting inside himself. "Quite adventurous, your butler, isn't he?"

Melinda fell silent, plopping down on the soft mattress. It was in that angle that she saw a marvellous portrait hanging above the fireplace, painfully and cryptically realistic as it returned her gaze, although so much fondly. It scared the living hell out of her: It looked _really_ real. It was a painting of a young European boy with blond hair and blue eyes.

Very blue eyes. A hue Melinda couldn't quite pinpoint… Like the shade of the sky at the precise instant of dusk, alight with arctic passion.

"What can you say about my artworks, Rin?" The girl snapped out of her reverie, but even as she looked away from the painting, the piercing cobalt shone through her grandfather's eyes, outshining his dark brown ones. She bit her lip. "They're awfully realistic."

A smile far from coquettish tugged at the drooping skin of Grandfather's face. "They should be."

She lifted her head slowly and lowered it; a sluggish nod. "It will be dinner soon enough. I shall go and look for your lost butler, wherever he may wander. You'll know when it's time to leave the room." Grandfather Joachim's eyes twinkled ominously as he made to the door. He added, "Never leave your room until the bell chimes, Rin."

And with a last, fleetingly enigmatic look, her grandfather closed the door.

She sighed and sprawled on the bed, letting her body sink limp into the cushion.

Melinda was always welcome to her grandfather's manor despite of how far they lived from each other. However, since her father passed away a few months before, things got edgy, not to mention difficult. Undeniably, a young lady's most precious thing in the world was her daddy, so imagine what she was like when the news got to her. She wasn't very far off from those other prissier girls who dubbed themselves as part of a "clique," of which she wasn't a member, but different in a way that she did love her father unconditionally. In fact, she wasn't labelled as anyone worth being with at all… She was just somebody that's there. She tried to mingle with the somewhat feeblest classmates of all first, believing them to be easy friends. It didn't quite work out as well as planned, for formalities were thrown in everywhere that she just threw in the towel. Most of the class was composed of… well, supercilious and disdainful people of high class who knew not a single synonym of fun. It was either Melinda was too rich, or she was too simple, as though she was too much or just never enough.

Her father would be the one to help her get through her friendlessness. It was like he's the sun in the dark pit of her world. Now that he's gone, it's like…

She bit her lip to keep the tears from flowing. It's in the past now, Rin. You can't do anything about it.

The sheets of the bed were warm, and it helped her feel a bit more at home. There was just that odd painting hanging directly above the fireplace, and it made Melinda feel the least comfortable. On the contrary, it was driving her off the edge—it was crazy real, man. Not exactly a person standing in front of you, per se. It was just like looking straight in a mirror. The fact that he resembled Melinda a lot didn't help. No, not at all.

She admired how her grandfather was the next Da Vinci and all, but his works get the best of his granddaughter more often than to be fond of. She swore, sometimes they'd just _move_ and their eyes would follow her, and, once she turned around, they'd be how they were. It's freaky, and weirdly, she'd been putting up with it for years. She thought that that feeling of sensing something's stalking you was only part of being a kid, and intuition at that age was entirely superstitious. But she was wrong.

Somehow, it's gotten worse. It was like the paintings were diverting her attention to them, and made sure it'd stay that way. Time didn't dull the experience at all. What's more, it seemed as though each visit, her grandfather was getting better with painting, and the features were even more humanlike—in the hallways there'd be artworks that filled the walls every foot away, one finished from different times. If the other was painted seven years ago, the other would be a score older. With that kind of talent, you'd wonder if that's how they got so rich. It wasn't. Oddly enough, her grandfather never consented to sell any of his paintings, for reasons yet to be known by her. But this painting…

Melinda stood up and walked over to the portrait, digging in every detail until she was full with awe at the lack of flaws.

It was a painting different from the others her grandfather did. This… this was a person, and a young boy. As far as she could tell by all the paintings she'd seen in the halls, he was only interested in painting objects, and other inanimate things. Wherever did he get the inspiration to make this…? It was so awfully in depth that it was realistic. Surely nobody could be so great as to work on something that didn't really exist, or something he didn't see with his own eyes before. Maybe it was him, when he was younger?

If he was so talented and all, wouldn't he paint an even more precise portrait of himself? This one looks so feminine and earnestly glad, if not happy—it almost couldn't possibly her grandfather. Perhaps he wanted to depict himself as this sporty youth?

She took her time examining the image, and felt the eeriness return: The closer she looked, the more the boy looked like _her_ than any blond boy she knew. As much as she tried to convince herself that it was just a stupid, ugly painting, it was useless. Her heart was beating like a drum, exhilarated by her panic and overreacting; it was almost like she could hear it blow out of her system through her ears, growing louder each second that passed while she looked at the portrait.

It was a young man with flaxen hair, his bangs swept to the side of his face to show more of his boyish looks. His feminine features were well proportionate with his masculine ones, creating an air to whoever inspected this that stressed he was in late pubescent years, only on the borderline of childhood. Judging by the looks of his clothes, he was European, though Melinda highly doubted her grandfather even saw vintage clothes before. He was directly looking at Melinda, his eyes a candid shade of cobalt that shone in the sunlight…

Oh God, his eyes…

…Oh God.

The _portrait_—he—no! _It_—

It _moved_. Its expression changed…he was _talking wordlessly_.

Melinda took a step back, fear mounting inside her—she was breaking out in cold sweat. This has got to be some insane joke her old man was pulling—it couldn't be _really_ moving—it's some random Japanese—hell, maybe German—technology that her grandfather bought before it was available in the country—

It didn't stop moving: In his—_its_—repetition of trying to noiselessly vocalise what it wanted to say, Melinda caught what it was mouthing.

And she felt like her heart stopped beating.

_Rin_. _Rin_. _Rin_._ Rin_. _Rin_. _Rin_._ Rin_. _Rin_. _Rin_._ Rin_. _Rin_. _Rin_.

She stumbled backward, and scrambled for the door, terror and deliriousness dominating over rationality. Before she could touch the handle, the lights went out, and coldness devoured her.

**.,.**

**HAPPY HALLOWEEN! XD**

**(1) I'm making use of the Japanese's pronunciation of 'L' by playing with the name "Melinda" and using the "lin" there as "Rin," therefore—BADABING-BADABOOM! Rin's name! She'll be addressed as "Rin" generally after this, so I hope you don't get tangled up. There's nothing wrong with "Rin," it's just that I need a more proper formality for her, because, here, her grandfather's filthy rich, so I need an even filthier rich-ier exaggeratingly-unnecessary longer name for "Rin."**

**(2) Her butler's—waitforit—an older version of Ryuto! (I think his name's kinda Gachapoid, hence, 'Gatch.') C'mon, he's AD-AWR-ABLE! I'm not using gender-bents or overly-used Vocaloids because I think the less popular ones deserve some lurve!**

**(3) Rin's outfit here is the one from **_Adolescence_**, because I'm the writer, and I want it that way. JK, JK. It suits her here, really!**

**(4) As for her grandpa, it wouldn't be too much to ask you to imagine an OLD **_PewDiePie_**, would it? (Don't trip at this, brothas.) Actually, he's based on the brand new English Vocaloid, YOHIOloid. It was derived from his provider's middle name, "Johio," and thus, "Joachim." I Searched for the words "her grandfather" in the whole context and found about 20 MATCHES, and I replaced mosta them XD**

**Just like my other non-Oneshot stories, this's gonna be long-ish. Probably longer than most, especially since this is Horror. (Oh, you guys gotta play Ib and The Witch's House! XD) Yeah, I'm taking a break from Humour, my usual genre. This gets better, I swear. This is only the prologue, I think, but Rin won't be alone in this! Of course, there's—/SHOT FOR NEARLY SPOILING I'm looking for a BEAUTIFUL GRANDEOUS fanart of Len trapped in a mirror/painting/something-with-a-frame and Rin's just outside looking/staring/just-gazing-at-the-distance or something, and then I COULDN'T, so I've to settle with CorruptedFlower!Len, which is in itself a great depiction of what I had in mind. I'm gonna update The Mistress now ;v; I'm so sorry!**


	2. Mirror the Niveous Moon

_T_he P_o_rtrait of Le_n_ Kaga_m_ine

_**T**_here was a hand in the dark, and it held a knif_**e**_

_The Graveyard Book_, by N. Gaiman

**A** high-pitched scream threatened to escape from Rin's mouth, but unexpectedly, before she could collapse to her feet, before sound came forth her lips, tremendous _noises_ drowned her will to shriek. Rackets of all the sorts that made her blood run cold.

Suddenly in the mansion it was raucous.

Sharp and high: Low and groaning: Fast drumming: Some slamming: Something that resembled an elephant on childbirth: These noises decorated the entire once-so silent and dead mansion, making it seem alive. Everywhere there seemed to be one kind of auditory disturbance: They were louder now. Out of it all, Rin felt her heart beating out of both sides of her ears, the thumping blocking the outward commotion. The clattering somehow sounded as though they were _approaching_ where Rin's spot was, and she felt like she grew out vines and ingrained herself to the floor.

Rin stared at what she thought to be the door, last she remembered before blackness concealed the sight, frozen in place. She felt like ice was frosting the ground, and she shivered: From the cold or from the denial, that there was something weird going on, she didn't know, and the latter she was afraid to say she thought truest. Then, there was a sound she couldn't _believe_ she was hearing. She didn't dare move, and her eyes were getting teary from the astonishment.

There was playful giggling. Like it belonged to a very young boy's voice.

Whoever it could've been had done no potential harm and only ran across the room, his vanishing footsteps and giggles relaxing Rin's ill nerves that reached their peaks. He was gone.

Could it be one of Grandfather's servants' son? Poor kid, running around in the dark…However last time she visited, a little more than a couple of months ago, she was positive that no child wandered about the mansion, or she would have played with him.

None of her grandfather's servants she seemed to know were immature enough to be up and about in a blackout, either…

Then, the part of her mind that was scuttling for explanation said, wasn't this an ordinary blackout?

The thought alone imperilled Rin had she let a gasp slip from her. Ghosts of atrocious monsters that she kept so well-hidden from her evasive consciousness made their way to creep up inside her, whispering probable carnages. Whatever could hear her, she was sure, if she should utter a quietest squeak, would potentially be a threat to her life, or just scare her enough to give her a cardiac arrest.

All of a sudden, the darkness seemed…_looped_, as though the interior of the room had—_been_—altered in the blackness, turning to an illusion she would find most horrible once—she refused to use an '_if_'—the lights would come back on. The floor her palms were spread out on was definitely moving: Her fingers were shaking, too. The vastness of the room felt too despotic, the emptiness suffocating Rin. Her instincts screamed at her, pleading mercy and for the warm, hot water rushing down her body to scald her into a numbing state, become detached, losing herself in the shower—

…Rin's ears strained, a long, running one-way sound passing her ears.

There was silence, before she knew it. Was it that her good thoughts prevailed…?

It was too quiet.

And for one second Rin believed she was safe.

The longer the time passed, the more her senses heightened, foretelling her that there was a reason behind the silence, one so strong to have made everything so quiet in less than how long the uproar of sounds took to fill the house with cantankerous reverberation, alerting her of a danger nearby, warning her of a presence in the room. She was blanketed in a thick sheet of heavy fear, atop it a foreboding entity's aura whomever it was emanating from, Rin was fairly sure, omniscient and could see her had she been elsewhere in the mansion.

One whose gaze she held for so long she discerned it in her dizziest daydreams.

Whose shade of blue was one she'd never forget.

Rin's mind was racing; her head filled with such condescending thoughts that discouraged her from believing in what little hope of sanity was left in her. According to her crazy, doddering smidge of faith, she had to turn around to see what could be standing there—waiting to scare the bejeeses out of her. This better not be funny, Gatch, Rin told herself to steel her courage, whatever ounce of belief that wanted so much to convince her it was merely a practical joke not doing so well. She bravely craned her neck to see what's behind her—

—the fireplace had been lit up, the embers burning, cackling, sizzling. It was radiating a dim light, with enough to see her room: It was the same, to be speaking in pure honesty, save for the carpet-less floor.

And a lone figure standing in front of the fire.

It was a boy. He was wearing what Rin distinguished in the little light she could use to see with green attire, all long sleeves concealing his somewhat pale skin: Rin could tell it by just looking at his outstretched hand reaching out to his hair, to brush a few strands from his eyes. She instantly took note of his hair, a startling golden shade of blond skimmed with red fiery streaks reflected from the fire. She couldn't see too much of his face to make a first impression of him, and, shallowly speaking, hoped she wouldn't stay with him long enough to.

Rin thought her heart had failed her that second. _Where did he come from?_

Just as she was about to open her mouth to talk, he turned his whole body to her direction.

Her heart was frozen over.

Pale creamy skin that glowed like delicate porcelain in the light of the fire had shadows casted on his forehead by his neat hair swept to either side of his face, forming a curtain of hair on his face that didn't dwarf his ever-so bright azure eyes twinkling in the darkness, the colour of a frosted blue rose, crystal clear in form and majesty. Nothing in the world can rival the bizarre yet exotic hue his eyes revealed: It was like that lone reminder that struck you the chord of the beauty in the simple things in life. She felt like she was dragged in by his electric blue orbs.

I-it was h-_him_…

He was the _painting_!

"Don't you like the music?"

His moist lips moved just as hers do: He was alive! He was definitely talking—and he just did, speaking using the mellowest of inflection, like a ripe fruit of winter, voice full of innocence and fluidity. And even as he did, Rin caught a tinge of slow understanding and careful experimenting, as though language was something he wasn't used to. He got the expression of what he said right, though.

What she knew of this boy should be solid fact and yet to be ascertained. Her voice cracked when she said, "What music?"

Before she knew it, lovely melodious music filled her ears.

It sounded as though it came from downstairs…

Rin recognised it. It was the one she used to dance to when she was younger…She'd try to recall, the urgency of the situation coaxing her into remembering. A rapid wave of flashback coursed through her eyes, whipping her with coldness: Her mother would tell her to calm down as she'd giddily jump around while her father, laughing, started to play a piece on the grand piano. The mansion would be filled with the harmonious music…

The people to know how to play that piece would be herself, her father, and her grandfather, the latter of the three the only plausible person to have been playing it this moment.

But why would he be playing the song now?

The boy's gaze never quite left her face. What solicitude he betrayed unknowingly on his face made Rin disregard all the creepiness she was getting from him. He was so focused on her that she just couldn't up and leave.

"It's actually the song of the lifeless."

The very atmosphere thawed her coldness and nearly scorched her with such heat.

The more Rin studied his expression, the more she could see how absolutely _hungry_ he appeared: He looked like he was radiating malice and, dare she say it, bloodlust. It didn't actually help that he seemed to look like that for a long time and even more when he didn't avert his gaze from her face. It looked off-putting, especially on a face more fitting to grace and elegance.

She choked on her words, her heart leaping out of her mouth.

"Y-you're dead…?"

The shadows formed dark stripes across his face, which didn't seem so perfect looking angry.

"No." All the piano's keys were simultaneously hit by order like a wave of discordant notes, and silence from downstairs. "We're more like _not alive to begin with_."

Rin felt a burn thrum in every fibre of her body as she inched her way to the door, getting to her feet in the quietest way she could. The boy loomed over to her like a shadow, materialising in the darkness. She fumbled for the doorknob behind her, shaking madly. She felt the hard wall, though couldn't grope her hand to—_where was the knob?_

What's scary was that the entire time—from when she was enthralled in his actuality, when something not unlike lightning struck her at the recognition of those blue eyes—he never looked at anything else and was just _begging_ for eye contact, and he maintained it on his own successfully enough—and Rin could feel her want to look at the same stunning hue again let concentration slip away from her.

Her left hand was failingly groping for the doorknob that could get her out of the room—away from him—as he was already a foot closer than he'd been a second ago. Her mind was screaming in panic. _No no no no no no _no_! Stay back!_

The boy stood high with such form and dignity that Rin felt her own shrinking: He was in front of her. He was so close to her that she'd forgotten how to breathe. It was then and there that she took in his scent: Strong and fresh, as though he was a pleasant plant blooming in the snow.

Her hand falling limp to her side, she looked up reflexively: Billowing freezing eyes turned misty with rile. "Let's play a _game_, shall we?"

Before she could look away from his hypnotising eyes, he pushed her lightly—

What she expected to fall on had been a door—yet she leaned a long way backward unto thin air: Her back was being embraced by the cold nothingness as she felt her weight hauling her backwards down. Her feet could support her no longer as she fell rearward—_there used to be a door there!_

Rin's hands futilely whipped up as she flailed in the hole, falling down: She wished to reach out to the boy and drag him down with her, demand of him an answer he just wasn't giving her.

"Wait!"

She fell further and further down the ditch of darkness, feeling suddenly weightless—

Up from where she was, the living portrait boy just flashed her a coquettish smile of derisive whimsicality.

—and nothing.

'**;,;,;,;,;,;,;.,;,;,;,;,;,;,;'**

At first, it was hot. Rin felt like she was in a sauna.

And then she adapted to the temperature of where she was lying: The floor sure was cold. As soon as she realised that, the warmness was suddenly replaced by acclimation. Rin was lying down, her cheek plastered on the floor with cold sweat. She could see nothing within the dark room that could help her identify where in the mansion she was.

Or _out_ of the mansion. Maybe she could've stepped out of the window—she was certain she'd gone to the right direction of the door, though.

She'd fallen down pretty deep—the odd thing was she felt little to no pain at all. Had she fallen on a flower patch? Her chances were as how unlikely it could be. Then bounce on a cold hard floor? Really, Rin.

Well, her mind argued, weirder things have happened. Like that boy…No, _painting_…

At a heartbeat she realised what situation she was in. Where were her grandfather and Gatch? His servants? Had they already come into her room and found the boy there, interrogated him, bound him until he'd talk of her whereabouts? If they _did_ ask where she was… If the boy lied—and Rin was legitimately confident that he could pull an act of innocence and guilelessness with his deceptive looks, and one that would make a fool out of all the faint-hearted deceivable servants—and they'd risk trusting a stranger for the sake of finding her, he'd undoubtedly lead them astray. _Did_ they come to her room? _Were_ they able to mobilise themselves from the paralysis of the fear of darkness?

No—he was _real now_—could they even _see_ him? That boy—that _painting_—the lights going out—

Panic and consternation threw Rin into distortion when everything dawned on her, almost like a meteor landing on her and splitting her skull.

What was he _doing_ to her? Was this all a stupid prank? Where—where were her grandfather and her butler? Where—

Where _was_ she?

The more her eyes adjusted to the lighting—however dim it may have been, it was clear to see with and just needed time to amend to—the more she could see what little of the room the light of the candles on the farthest walls could illuminate: She was in the very middle of the large empty room, excluding herself, whose only way of being perceived as one was a pair of tiny separate candles hung up on either side of the vast chamber. Even though she couldn't tell what room inside her grandfather's mansion she was in, she did know this: Not once had she been inside here before.

If she had been, she'd definitely remember. In every room she'd been into in Grandfather Joachim's manor, there was at least one framed painting hung on a wall and everything else that resided was decorative ornaments, all lavish. She knew her grandfather: He'd be extravagant about everything, and would put everything in detail and in order. If one such thing that was of his possession—or even something that he'd claim to be his if it wasn't yet—out of place or wasn't where it should be, he'd go ballistic and demand that the servants arrange it back the way he liked it. There would be a large window here and there or even a veranda to breathe in the fresh air from—in here was nothing. Not even the overly-redundant chandelier.

Speaking of chandelier, the ceiling was empty of any shafts through which she could have fallen to get into the room. So the only credible explanation for that was that, after the fall, someone had taken her here. She couldn't deduce how long she'd been unconscious, but, judging by the weightiness of her head, it wasn't too long to last an hour, at the very least.

The silence was singing a perish song, and it screeched so loudly Rin's ears were straining from the soundlessness. She took in a breath, steadily standing to her feet.

Air seemed too thick to inhale: Rin fretted an asthma attack, and her mind nagged that if she doesn't get a hold of herself right now something a lot worse than a coughing fit would be headed toward her.

She took in a deep breath, a scaly monster grinding her insides. There had to be some kind of door here—she couldn't just have _been_ here without an entrance. Could she?

"…_Uarrgh."_

Rin stood still—any movement could lose that sound, or draw it to her. She was scared of either, so she remained where she was, relying on her ears to help her find the source.

It sounded like a sort of grumble…

A guttural noise; sounded a woman's.

"Hello?" Her own voice bounced back to her, although that much eerier. The echoes didn't end.

Instead of feeling a little less frightened, talking inside the empty room felt creepier with the echoes ricocheting off the walls.

"Who's there…?" she felt her throat contracting from fear of hearing her own voice repeating the words in such a way that made her spine gelatinised. She bit her tongue.

A cool breeze swept by the room: Chilly. There was nobody else in there with her, and nothing else she could have mistaken to have made the sound.

Until she saw, behind her at the farthest end of the room, unbelievably so distant from sight that the light could barely reach it and be seen at a first glance because of such dimness, a lovely gold frame encrusted with light jewels hung on the wall. Only, not a painting was there.

But a very distressed, very petrified crying woman.

She was slamming her hands on an invisible border that separated her from the room, as though a two-way mirror kept her there. Rin read her lips.

_"Help me."_

**.,.**

**The giggling kid running through the hall was NOT Len, okay. (I emphasised 'LITTLE BOY.') Rin's first puzzle was Echo's Lament—totally made-up, but I wish I had enough talent to make one for REAL (SOBS)—in which a painting of Len is shown crying in a black background, wishing he had a voice of his own to speak with. In a way, Len DID kinda talk to her. Via echo.**

**Some introduction this was…**

**As you can see, I'm depicting Rin as this depressed yet gullible and taintless girl who goes along with things as she's used to doing. Her character's flexible enough for a child to relate to her, as one would behave were he/she placed in a similar situation. At least, that's how it is in GAMES. Rin's as clueless as you are from this point, so if I steer her in one direction you should be able to follow with ease. The blonde boy obviously being Len, he's extorting something huge Rin owed him, something our protagonist will soon learn to cherish. As you've discerned, I've done more than just insinuated that Len's some kind of Ice Prince in the context every chance I get.**

**I'M FIFTEEN! MAICHEESES! (I shouldn't be talking like a college professor!) Questions?**

**(1) Why's Len a douchebag here?**

**(2) Is this twincest?**

**(3) Where's Gatch?**

**(4) Is she the single protagonist here?**

**(5) Are there gonna be multiple endings just like in Ib?**

**Because he is. As I've said, no. It's—I-call-a-new-RinxLen-shipping-XD—PAINTIN'CEST! That would be telling ;) Oh, and this one: YES. I must confess that I have a LOT of endings in mind that would fittingly conclude this story. They're all gonna be parallel, so if in one ending, say, Gatch was actually a zombie in disguise and the fact that he is plays a minor role in the plot, he wouldn't be one in the other. And NO, Gatch ain't no zombie. Even here. Read my profile please.**

_Special thanks to: _Lolly101; DarkestThinginTheLight; Guest; The-Devils-Pets; Antheasa; Nekuro Yamikawa; those-who-favourited

_**I bequeath thee thy a most grandeous meal of cupcakes**_


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